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This was originally inspired by a Final Fantasy VII GMV that I'd watched years back, decided I'd do my own take with the song/poem ^^ The coloring I used in Sony Vegas was actually brighter than this, when I converted the uncompressed .avi file to .mp4 using zarxgui, the colors slightly looked washed out. I have yet to figure out a way to fix that.

This is my second AMV, I'm quite inexperienced with the usage of text, and there isn't any dark/gloomy amv I've watched with texts that I could've gotten an idea from.

This was pretty interesting. I'm rarely a fan of text and think you could have handled that aspect a little better. It felt like it was moving to different parts of the screen in a haphazard manner than I couldn't take in both the visuals and read the text at the same time some times. I would suggest to put the text right under the focus point so our eyes wouldn't have to move so far and we'd be able to take in both elements together a lot better, or just put in the same spot, like the center consistently. As for washed out colors I would say that just up the saturation up a bit more and it should come out a bit better after compression. There was some banding issues I noticed too, but it only bothered me initially cause I got taken in by the mood of the vid which was pretty well executed.

Shin-AMV wrote:This was pretty interesting. I'm rarely a fan of text and think you could have handled that aspect a little better. It felt like it was moving to different parts of the screen in a haphazard manner than I couldn't take in both the visuals and read the text at the same time some times. I would suggest to put the text right under the focus point so our eyes wouldn't have to move so far and we'd be able to take in both elements together a lot better, or just put in the same spot, like the center consistently. As for washed out colors I would say that just up the saturation up a bit more and it should come out a bit better after compression. There was some banding issues I noticed too, but it only bothered me initially cause I got taken in by the mood of the vid which was pretty well executed.

Thank you so much for your kind comment! I'm usually not a fan of text either, but I wanted to experiment a little with it nonetheless. I don't plan on using text anytime soon again, but when I do- I'll be keeping your advice in mind! Thank you for the helpful criticism!

chit wrote:yeah usually not a fan of text either but it was aight hereand if you were try to give your audience the heebie jeebies, mission accomplished sir!

I'm a girl xD Just thought I'd clear that up ^^And thank you!

Rendakor wrote:The audio on this didn't work for me. It would play for 2-3 seconds, then cut out for a bit, then come back on, rinse, repeat. Not sure what was going on.

Yeah, the preview's been glitched for some reason. =/ I've tried contacting an admin to fix it, he's tried re-encoding it, but it just didn't work apparently. And I didn't want to have to PM him again because I felt bad taking up his time for this. Downloading works though!

But yeah, I enjoyed this quite a bit. The Higurashi soundtrack is incredibly beautiful and haunting, I'm a big fan of it. School Days, I admit is something that has always been on my list for quite some time but never really interested me enough to sit down and watch. Although this video may have bumped it up my list a tad bit. Anyhoo, the pairing was fantastic so thumbs up there.

As for the text, I understand it was a poem but I think it would have actually been a bit better if you left more out of it. Leave the most potent and haunting lines in and then let the viewer decipher what they have to do with the story your building in front of them. It leaves more mystery and intrigue to the video as opposed to a book with pretty background pictures. The text was nice but it drew my eyes away from what was going on too often and considering this was a video and not an essay, that's not exactly a good thing. Also, get rid of that lip flap! This wasn't a lip sync video and I didn't hear any voices so tell them to zip it! hahaAlso, was that some roto work in the very beginning or just a filter? Either way,I liked it. It gave the world a very bleak and desolate feel that added to the video. It would have been nice to see you keep that kind of thing up a bit more with some color effects to darken the mood even further. But that's not really a problem as much as it is a "this would've been cool" type of thing.

Then finally, the quality had issues. Tons of banding and decent amount of macroblocking. As far as I know, School Days was never actually released as a 720p remaster, meaning that you blew up something that was 480p to 720p. This is a rather common mistake (especially since all you hear about now with youtube and such is ZOMG 720P HD!!!!) and while luckily, it's not the worst upscale I've ever seen, it still looks pretty nasty. I know that 720p is awesome and all but if your quality is going to take that big of a hit just scale it down to 480p and clean up what you can.

Overall, pretty damn solid for such a new editor. Any complaints listed are rather minor and are easily corrected. As I said, I've got my eye on you now!

Niyaosity wrote:

Rendakor wrote:The audio on this didn't work for me. It would play for 2-3 seconds, then cut out for a bit, then come back on, rinse, repeat. Not sure what was going on.

Yeah, the preview's been glitched for some reason. =/ I've tried contacting an admin to fix it, he's tried re-encoding it, but it just didn't work apparently. And I didn't want to have to PM him again because I felt bad taking up his time for this. Downloading works though!

With this ^ I'm almost curious if it's the encode itself at this point. I had the same issue when previewing so I downloaded it. The download actually crashed my media player classic and would only run in VLC. I ran another re-encode on the stream but I'd recommend messaging Kariudo if you haven't already. And don't worry about bugging/taking up time! Seriously, we get lazy sometimes and need a fire lit under our butts And if he gives you any guff tell him Yue will beat him up if he's not nice.Beyond that, maybe try re-encoding it yourself with another encoding program? Because yeah, crashing the stream is one thing and then crashing my player is another thing. And those are two bad things. THINGS.

But yeah, I enjoyed this quite a bit. The Higurashi soundtrack is incredibly beautiful and haunting, I'm a big fan of it. School Days, I admit is something that has always been on my list for quite some time but never really interested me enough to sit down and watch. Although this video may have bumped it up my list a tad bit. Anyhoo, the pairing was fantastic so thumbs up there.

As for the text, I understand it was a poem but I think it would have actually been a bit better if you left more out of it. Leave the most potent and haunting lines in and then let the viewer decipher what they have to do with the story your building in front of them. It leaves more mystery and intrigue to the video as opposed to a book with pretty background pictures. The text was nice but it drew my eyes away from what was going on too often and considering this was a video and not an essay, that's not exactly a good thing. Also, get rid of that lip flap! This wasn't a lip sync video and I didn't hear any voices so tell them to zip it! hahaAlso, was that some roto work in the very beginning or just a filter? Either way,I liked it. It gave the world a very bleak and desolate feel that added to the video. It would have been nice to see you keep that kind of thing up a bit more with some color effects to darken the mood even further. But that's not really a problem as much as it is a "this would've been cool" type of thing.

Then finally, the quality had issues. Tons of banding and decent amount of macroblocking. As far as I know, School Days was never actually released as a 720p remaster, meaning that you blew up something that was 480p to 720p. This is a rather common mistake (especially since all you hear about now with youtube and such is ZOMG 720P HD!!!!) and while luckily, it's not the worst upscale I've ever seen, it still looks pretty nasty. I know that 720p is awesome and all but if your quality is going to take that big of a hit just scale it down to 480p and clean up what you can.

Overall, pretty damn solid for such a new editor. Any complaints listed are rather minor and are easily corrected. As I said, I've got my eye on you now!

Niyaosity wrote:

Rendakor wrote:The audio on this didn't work for me. It would play for 2-3 seconds, then cut out for a bit, then come back on, rinse, repeat. Not sure what was going on.

Yeah, the preview's been glitched for some reason. =/ I've tried contacting an admin to fix it, he's tried re-encoding it, but it just didn't work apparently. And I didn't want to have to PM him again because I felt bad taking up his time for this. Downloading works though!

With this ^ I'm almost curious if it's the encode itself at this point. I had the same issue when previewing so I downloaded it. The download actually crashed my media player classic and would only run in VLC. I ran another re-encode on the stream but I'd recommend messaging Kariudo if you haven't already. And don't worry about bugging/taking up time! Seriously, we get lazy sometimes and need a fire lit under our butts And if he gives you any guff tell him Yue will beat him up if he's not nice.Beyond that, maybe try re-encoding it yourself with another encoding program? Because yeah, crashing the stream is one thing and then crashing my player is another thing. And those are two bad things. THINGS.

It is! While I was editing, my Mother would insist I'd give her the headphones so she could listen to the music, and I'd sit there waiting on her to finish because she'd have it on repeat xD Personally, I'm not a fan of School Days. It isn't the kind of anime I'd recommend watching, but nonetheless- was fun to edit with.

I agree, I should have left some of the unimportant text out (which I did, but that was just one line that I didn't feel was fitting). It did take some of the attention away from what was going on, also because I've added the text in different directions, but at some parts- I felt like centering the text was blocking their faces/what was going on in the clips. I had to go through one of my (very few) favorite amvs with text usage to get a slight idea of how this should be done; it had text in random directions, but it didn't quite work out AS well for this amv I suppose. I definitely agree though, leaving some of the text out would've been more cryptic.As for the lip flap- rookie mistake! I'd masked it out in two clips, but completely forgot to do the others by the end. Although, I'd left it on purpose at the part where Makoto was supposedly yelling at Sekai.I just had to google what "roto" work was. Isn't that a brush tool from Adobe After Effects? If so, nope; I've yet to learn to use that program (I've tried to sometime ago, but it seemed a little complicated to me compared to Sony Vegas). If you're referring to the black and white clips with a few colors being highlighted, then that was "Color Corrector (Secondary)" effect from Sony Vegas.

The amount of times I had to re-render it, testing out all sorts of settings is unbelievable. I've tried reading up on this forum and learning to fix my rendering/quality issues, but it goes way over my head xD I'll eventually get there though!

I had actually PM'ed GloryQuestor about the glitched preview, he marked the preview build for re-encoding but that didn't fix it. I wasn't too fussed about it as the download still seemed to work (for me anyway), so I didn't want to bother him again. It crashed your player? I'm sorry! That's strange though, I downloaded it a few times to make sure it worked fine, and I've had no problems with it so far. I'll be PM'ing Kariudo though!

I'd like to thank you so much for taking the time out to point out the mistakes I've made, as well as for your kind words, I really appreciate it! I will definitely be looking forward to your helpful inputs for my future amvs! ^^

Rendakor wrote:I didn't use the preview, I downloaded it and still had that issue.

I just tried playing it with Windows Media Player, and it does crash. It works just fine with KMPlayer for some reason though. =/ Sorry for the inconvenience, I'll try re-encoding it!

Niyaosity wrote:I just had to google what "roto" work was. Isn't that a brush tool from Adobe After Effects? If so, nope; I've yet to learn to use that program (I've tried to sometime ago, but it seemed a little complicated to me compared to Sony Vegas). If you're referring to the black and white clips with a few colors being highlighted, then that was "Color Corrector (Secondary)" effect from Sony Vegas.

Ah! I had a feeling it was either a quickie roto or a filter along those lines. Looks like you either used desaturate all but reds or desaturate highs now that I check it out again.

There are a couple roto tools in After Effects, but Vegas actually has a roto tool too! It's not the best in the world but it gets the job done. I'm a Vegas user myself, by the way

It was a good watch. I agree with Yue that the video would have been stronger had the poem been edited. The text drew away from the video at times rather than adding to it. Another issue I had with the text was the font for the poem and the font for the cell phone were too similar. If you submit this to contests, you'll also have to worry about text outside of the title safe area getting cut off.

The coloring is good. Narration is good, though at the end I'm not sure if the girl is committing suicide or just is in a bad mental state.

I really enjoyed this though

Sidenote:The preview is incredibly glitched. It told me the video was 4234 minutes long, and I could only ever get either the audio or the video to play, not both at once.

My apologies for the late reply! I've just re-encoded the video and have also applied a few changes to the AMV (with Kariudo's permission). There isn't much of a change, I've just fixed the lip flap and have removed some of the text. The banding/quality issues are still present as I couldn't find a way to fix those.

Radical_Yue wrote:

Niyaosity wrote:I just had to google what "roto" work was. Isn't that a brush tool from Adobe After Effects? If so, nope; I've yet to learn to use that program (I've tried to sometime ago, but it seemed a little complicated to me compared to Sony Vegas). If you're referring to the black and white clips with a few colors being highlighted, then that was "Color Corrector (Secondary)" effect from Sony Vegas.

Ah! I had a feeling it was either a quickie roto or a filter along those lines. Looks like you either used desaturate all but reds or desaturate highs now that I check it out again.

There are a couple roto tools in After Effects, but Vegas actually has a roto tool too! It's not the best in the world but it gets the job done. I'm a Vegas user myself, by the way

If you ever need any help, feel free to hit me up on here or skype.

Thank you so much, I'll definitely flick you a message if I ever need any help. ^^ I'm still clueless at rendering/encoding, I used to go with whatever until I found a little guide on this forum and realised I wasn't anywhere close to doing it correctly, LOL. I still am not, but I've at least made a slight improvement. Most of the technical stuff goes "whoooosh" over my head. xD

Warlike Swans wrote:It was a good watch. I agree with Yue that the video would have been stronger had the poem been edited. The text drew away from the video at times rather than adding to it. Another issue I had with the text was the font for the poem and the font for the cell phone were too similar. If you submit this to contests, you'll also have to worry about text outside of the title safe area getting cut off.

The coloring is good. Narration is good, though at the end I'm not sure if the girl is committing suicide or just is in a bad mental state.

I really enjoyed this though

Sidenote:The preview is incredibly glitched. It told me the video was 4234 minutes long, and I could only ever get either the audio or the video to play, not both at once.

Thank you! I actually used two different fonts for both the poem and cellphone. You're right though, it did look quite similar. I didn't notice it until you pointed it out, and so I've fixed it before re-uploading. Thank you for your helpful criticism!

At the end, she doesn't commit suicide, she's just in a really bad mental state.

Woah! I was going to let this play in the corner of my screen but it definitely grabbed my attention. So much so that I had to watch it again. Along with some of the comments above it was about difficult for my eyes to locate the texts, read it, and still see what was going on.

chibiookami86 wrote:Woah! I was going to let this play in the corner of my screen but it definitely grabbed my attention. So much so that I had to watch it again. Along with some of the comments above it was about difficult for my eyes to locate the texts, read it, and still see what was going on.

Still a good watch.

Thank you so much, your comment means a lot to me! I've tried the best I could to remove as much of the poem as possible, but the lines I've left as is were really tempting for me to keep because they seemed so potent to me. I could've centered it all, but as I've mentioned before- they seemed to be blocking the clips at some parts, so I had to either put them at the bottom or top. I'm normally not into text usage, but I definitely am going to have to work on it. I'm happy you enjoyed it though!

This was pretty nice, very enjoyable indeed. Since everyone said pretty much of everything let me just say this, I am a fan of text, but next time if you do decide to use text don't do too much of it because then it can actually ruin the amv when you see it after every 5-10 or so seconds. Also make sure it's at a place where it's not too much of a deal where you want to see a scene and the text is in the way, then that just get annoying.